Alfred Binet in The Psychologist

The latest issue of the British Psychological Society’s flagship journal, The Psychologist, has just come out and it is freely available on-line in its entirety.

Of particular interest to historians will be Richard Howard’s piece on the French inventor of the intelligence test (among other things), Alfred Binet. Dr. Howard, who is a Reader in Personality Disorders in the Psychiatry Division at Nottingham University, emphasizes the differences between the value Binet saw in his own test and the uses to which it was put by Lewis Terman and other in the US. He also covers Binet’s wide range of interests prior to the intelligence test, from his work on hysteria and suggestibility in Jean-Martin Charcot’s clinic, to his studies of the unreliability of eyewitnesses in law courts, to his doctorate in insect physiology.

About Christopher Green

Professor of Psychology at York University (Toronto). Former editor of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Creator of the "Classics in the History of Psychology" website and of the "This Week in the History of Psychology" podcast series.
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6 thoughts on “Alfred Binet in The Psychologist”

Considering Binet’s own views on intelligence testing in children, you have to wonder how things might have developed if he had managed to live longer. As it was, Binet was a powerful influence on Jean Piaget (who trained under Binet before his death).

I also think the trope of well-intentioned, complex Binet versus his cruder, more mean-spirited American counterparts (central to the narrative of Gould’s Mismeasure of Man) is somewhat exaggerated. Recent work, such as John Carson’s Measure of Merit, have shown Binet’s role in the French administrative state and its sorting of people.